About

"In other games, level designers are trying to achieve that by manually scripting every single AI spawn around each corner or gameplay arena," said Grigorenko. "WOTLK Classic innovated the approach and tried to do most of this work procedurally (with a significant level of WOTLK Gold manual scripting, of course). It is a very complex approach but the benefit is that your game is much more replayable in the end."

Interestingly, the Second Extinction team's design philosophy around playtime stands in unique contrast to the others P2Pah spoke to. While other teams all said allowing for quick rounds is key, Berry said Systemic Reaction is going in the other direction. "We are actually operating on a philosophy of the longer the session, the better." He added that the team is still experimenting with this approach as the game moves through Early Access.

Chatting with five teams began to paint a picture of the challenges of game development, even in cases such as this, when you have a standard-bearing example to point to. Each team had to learn for itself what to keep, what to reimagine, and what to ignore completely when building on the landmark co-op experience. The answers were rarely the same, except in the case of the game's replayability. That makes a lot of sense when you play these five games, as they each emphasize that, too. Whatever else they've done to reshape the co-op horde shooter genre, they've essentially all sworn an oath to keep players guessing with each new round.

Still, is there something else that keeps WOTLK Classic so popular nearly a decade and a half later? For buy WOW WOTLK Classic Gold  a fun thought experiment, imagine all of these games, and others like them, exist today and WOTLK Classic launches as a brand-new experience. Does its simplicity still make it a classic, or have players' expectations changed so much now that it would be left sinking in a sea of similar games? It doesn't offer upgradeable heroes or weapons. It doesn't even have interchangeable cosmetics, which today is often the lifeblood of a game's live-service economy.